Down These Strange Streets

STYX AND STONES by Steven Saylor

Bestseller Steven Saylor is one of the brightest stars in the historical mystery subgenre, along with authors such as Lindsey Davis, John Maddox Roberts, and the late Ellis Peters. He is the author of the long-running Roma Sub Rosa series, which details the adventures of Gordianus the Finder, a detective in a vividly realized Ancient Rome, in such novels as Roman Blood, Arms of Nemesis, Catilina’s Riddle, The Venus Throw, A Murder on the Appian Way, Rubicon, Last Seen in Massilia, A Mist of Prophecies, and The Judgment of Caesar. Gordianus’s exploits at shorter lengths have been collected in The House of the Vestals: The Investigations of Gordianus the Finder and A Gladiator Dies Only Once: The Further Investigations of Gordianus the Finder. Saylor’s other books include A Twist at the End, Have You Seen Dawn?, and a huge non-Gordianus historical novel, Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome. His most recent books are a Gordianus novel, The Triumph of Caesar, and the big second volume in the Roma sequence, Empire: The Novel of Imperial Rome. He lives in Berkeley, California.

With the suspenseful story that follows, “Styx and Stones,” he introduces a whole new series of tales that will take a teenaged Gordianus to visit the Seven Wonders of the World; his traveling companion is the elderly Greek poet Antipater of Sidon. The Seven Wonders stories take place in 92–90 B.C., and so serve as a prequel to the first novel in the Roma Sub Rosa series, Roman Blood, which is set in 80 B.C. Here, venturing far beyond the world of Rome and Greece, Gordianus and Antipater discover that the fabled city of Babylon is a mere ghost of its former glory, haunted—and menaced—by its wanton past.

IN BABYLON, WE SHALL SEE NOT ONE, BUT TWO OF THE GREAT WONDERS of the World,” said Antipater. “Or at least, we shall see what remains of them.”

We had spent the night at a dusty little inn beside the Euphrates River. My traveling companion had been quiet and grumpy from the moment he got out of bed that morning—travel is hard on old men—but as we drew closer to Babylon, traveling south on the ancient road that ran alongside the river, his spirits rose and little by little he became more animated.

The innkeeper had told us that the ancient city was not more than a few hours distant, even accounting for the slow progress of the asses we were riding, and all morning a smudge that suggested a city had loomed ahead of us on the low horizon, very gradually growing more pronounced. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and for miles around is absolutely flat, without even low hills to break the view. On such a vast, featureless plain, you might think that you could see forever, but the ripples of heat that rose from the earth distorted the view, so that objects near and far took on an uncertain, even uncanny appearance. A distant tower turned out to be a palm tree; a pile of strangely motionless—dead?—bodies suddenly resolved into a heap of gravel, apparently put there by whoever maintained the road.

For over an hour I tried to make sense of a northward-traveling party that seemed to be approaching us on the road. The shimmering heat waves by turns appeared to magnify the group, then make them grow smaller, then disappear altogether, then reappear. At first I thought it was a company of armed men, for I thought I saw sunlight glinting on their weapons. Then I decided I was seeing nothing more than a single man on horseback, perhaps wearing a helmet or some other piece of armor that reflected a bluish gleam. Then the person, or persons, or whatever it was that approached us, vanished in the blink of an eye, and I felt a shiver, wondering if we were about to encounter a company of phantoms.

At last we met our fellow travelers on the road. The party turned out to consist of several armed guards and two small carts pulled by asses and piled high with stacks of bricks, but not bricks of any sort I had seen before. These were large and variously shaped, most about a foot square, and covered on the outward-facing sides with a dazzling glaze, some yellow, some blue, some mixed. They were not newly made—uneven edges and bits of adhering mortar indicated they had been chiseled free from some existing structure—but except for a bit of dust, the colored glazes glimmered with a jewel-like brightness.

Antipater grew very excited. “Can it be?” he muttered. “Bricks from the fabled walls of Babylon!”

The old poet awkwardly dismounted and shuffled toward the nearest cart, where he reached out to touch one of the bricks, running his fingertips over the shimmering blue glaze.

The driver at first objected, and called to one of the armed guards, who drew his sword and stepped forward. Then the driver laughed, seeing Antipater’s bright-eyed wonder, and waved the guard back. Speaking to Antipater, the driver said something in a language I didn’t recognize. Apparently, neither did Antipater, who squinted up at the man and said, “Speakee Greekee?”

This was my first visit to a land where the majority of the population conversed in languages other than Latin and Greek. Antipater had a smattering of Parthian, but I had noticed that he preferred to address the natives in broken Greek, as if somehow this would be more comprehensible to them than the flawless Greek he usually spoke.

“I know Greek, yes, little bit,” said the driver, holding his thumb close to his forefinger.

“You come from Babylon, no?” Antipater also tended to raise his voice when speaking to the natives, as if they might be deaf.

“From Babylon, yes.”

“How far?” Antipater engaged in an elaborate bit of sign language to clarify his meaning.

“Babylon, from here? Oh, two hour. Maybe three,” amended the driver, eyeing our weary-looking asses.

Antipater looked in the direction of the smudge on the horizon, which had grown decidedly larger but still held no promise of towering walls. He sighed. “I begin to fear, Gordianus, that nothing at all remains of the fabled walls of Babylon. Surely, if they were as large as legend asserts, and if any remnants still stand, we would see something of them by now.”

“Bricks come from old walls, yes,” said the driver, understanding only some of Antipater’s comments and gesturing to his load. “My neighbor finds, buried behind his house. Very rare. Very valuable. He sell to rich merchant in Ctesiphon. Now my neighbor is rich man.”

“Beautiful, aren’t they, Gordianus?” Antipater ran his palm over a glazed surface, then lifted the brick to look at the bottom. “By Zeus, this one is actually stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar! It must date from his reign.” For a moment I thought Antipater was about to break into verse—creating extemporaneous poems was his specialty—but his thoughts took a more practical turn. “These bricks would be worth a fortune back in Rome. My patron Quintus Lutatius Catulus owns a few, which he displays as specimens in his garden. I think he paid more for those five or six Babylonian bricks than he did for all the statues in his house put together. Ah well, let’s push on.”

Antipater gave the driver a coin for his trouble, then remounted, and we resumed our slow, steady progress toward the shimmering smudge on the horizon.

I cleared my throat. “What makes those old bricks so valuable? And why did the Babylonians build their walls from bricks in the first place? I should think any proper city wall would be made of stone.”

The look Antipater shot at me made me feel nine years old rather than nineteen. “Look around you, Gordianus. Do you see any stones? There’s not a quarry for miles. This part of the world is completely devoid of the kind of stones suitable for constructing temples and other buildings, much less walls that stretch for miles and are so wide that chariots can ride atop them. No, except for a few temples adorned with limestone and bitumen imported at great expense, the city of Nebuchadnezzar was constructed of bricks. They were made from clay mixed with finely chopped straw, then compressed in molds and hardened by fire. Amazingly, such bricks are very nearly as strong as stone, and in the ancient Chaldean language the word for brick and stone is the same. They can’t be carved like stone, of course, but they can be decorated with colored glazes that never fade.”

“So the famous walls of Babylon were built by—” I hesitated over the difficult name.

“King Nebuchadnezzar.” Antipater made a point to enunciate carefully, as he had when speaking to the cart driver. “The city of Babylon itself was founded, at least in legend, by an Assyrian queen named Semiramis, who lived back in the age of Homer. But it was a much later king, of the Chaldean dynasty, who raised Babylon to the height of its glory. His name was Nebuchadnezzar and he reigned five hundred years ago. He rebuilt the whole city on a grid design, with long, straight avenues—quite different from the chaos you’re accustomed to in Rome, Gordianus—and he adorned the city with magnificent temples to the Babylonian gods, chief among them Marduk and Ishtar. He constructed a huge temple complex called Etemenanki—the Foundation of Heaven and Earth—in the form of a towering, seven-tiered ziggurat; some say the ziggurat rivals the pyramids of Egypt in size and should itself be numbered among the Seven Wonders. For the delight of his Median queen, who was homesick for the mountain forests and flowery meadows of her distant homeland, Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens, a paradise perched like a bird’s nest high above the earth. And he encircled the whole city with a wall seventy-five feet high and thirty feet wide—wide enough for two chariots to meet and pass. The walls were fortified with crenellated battlements and towers that rose over a hundred feet, and the whole length was decorated with patterns and images in blue and yellow, so that from a distance the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar shimmered like baubles of lapis strung upon a necklace of gold.”

He gazed dubiously at the horizon. The smudge continued to grow, but looked more like a daub of mud than a jewel—though it seemed to me that I was beginning to glimpse a massive object that rose above the rest of the smudge and shone with various colors. Was it the ziggurat?

“What happened to Nebuchadnezzar’s empire?” I said. “What happened to his walls?”

“Empires rise, empires fall—even the empire of Rome, someday . . .” This was not the first time Antipater had expressed his disdain for Rome’s imperial power, but even here, far from Rome’s influence, he spoke such words under his breath. “Just as the Assyrians had fallen to the Chaldeans, so the Chaldeans fell to the Persians. A hundred years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon revolted against Xerxes, the same Persian monarch who foolishly imagined he could conquer Greece. Xerxes had more success with Babylon; he sacked the city and looted the temples, and some say he demolished the great walls, destroying them so completely that hardly a trace remained—only a multitude of glazed bricks, coveted by collectors across the world. A hundred years later, when Alexander advanced on the city, the Babylonians offered no resistance and came out to greet him, so perhaps indeed they no longer had walls adequate to defend them. They say Alexander intended to restore Babylon to its former glory and to make it the capital of the world, but instead he died there at the age of thirty-two. His successor built a new city nearby, on the Tigris, and named it for himself; the new capital of Seleucia claimed whatever wealth and power remained in Babylon, and the ancient city was largely forgotten—except by the scholars and sages who flocked there, attracted by the cheap rents, and by astrologers, who are said to find the ziggurat an ideal platform for stargazing.”

“So we’re likely to meet astrologers in Babylon?” I said.

“Without a doubt. Astrology originated with the Chaldeans. The science is still a novelty in Rome, I know, but it’s been gaining in popularity among the Greeks ever since a Babylonian priest of Marduk named Berossus set up a school of astrology on the island of Cos, back in the days of Alexander.”

We rode along in silence for a while. I became certain that the highest point of the ever-growing smudge must indeed be the multicolored ziggurat, dominating the skyline of Babylon. I could also make out something that appeared to be a wall, but it did not look very high, and in color it was a reddish brown, as if made of plain clay bricks, not of shimmering lapis and gold.

“What about the Hanging Gardens that Nebuchadnezzar built for his wife?” I said. “Do they still exist?” I said.

“Soon enough, we shall see for ourselves,” said Antipater.

AT LAST THE WALLS OF BABYLON LOOMED BEFORE US. I COULD SEE THAT Antipater was profoundly disappointed.

“Ah, well, I was prepared for this,” he said with a sigh, as we crossed a dry moat and rode through the gate. Had we encountered it anywhere else, the wall would have been reasonably impressive—it rose perhaps thirty feet and extended as far as I could see along the bank of the Euphrates—but it was made of common reddish-brown bricks. This wall was certainly not one of the Wonders of the World.

We passed though a lively marketplace, full of exotic smells and colorful characters; the place exuded a quaint provincial charm, but I didn’t feel the unmistakable thrill of being in one of the world’s great cities, like Rome or Ephesus.

Then, ahead of us, I saw the Ishtar Gate.

I didn’t know what to call it at the time; I only knew that my jaw suddenly dropped and my heartbeat quickened. Bright sunlight glinted off the multicolored tiles, animating the amazing images of remarkable animals—magnificent horned aurochs, roaring lions, and terrifying dragons. Other patterns were more abstract, suggesting jewels and blossoms, but constructed on a gigantic scale. Blue predominated, and there were as many shades as one might see on the face of the sea in the course of a day, from the bright azure of noon to midnight indigo. There were also many shades of yellow and gold, and borders made of a dazzling green. The parapets that towered above us were crenellated with a pattern that delighted the eye. But the gate was only a fragment, standing in isolation; the wall extended only a short distance to either side, then abruptly ended.

A group of natives, seeing our astonishment, ran toward us and competed to engage us in conversation. At length Antipater nodded to the one who seemed to speak the best Greek.

“What is this?” said Antipater.

“The great wall!” declared the man, who had a scraggly beard and was missing several teeth.

“But this can’t be all of it!” protested Antipater.

“All that remains,” said the man. “When Xerxes pulled down the walls of Nebuchadnezzar, this gate he left, to show how great was the wall he destroyed. The Ishtar Gate, it is called, to the glory of the goddess.” He held out his palm, into which Antipater obligingly pressed a coin.

“Think of it, Gordianus,” Antipater whispered. “Alexander himself rode though this very gate when he entered the city in triumph.”

“No wonder he wanted to make his capital here,” I said, gazing straight up as we passed under the lofty archway. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s truly magnificent.”

“Imagine many such gates, connected by a wall no less magnificent that extended for miles and miles,” said Antipater. He shook his head. “And now, all vanished, except for this.”

As we rode on, the man followed after us.

“I show you everything,” he offered. “I show you Hanging Gardens, yes?”

Antipater brightened. Was there some chance that the fabled gardens still existed, so many centuries after the time of Nebuchadnezzar and his Median queen?

“Not far, not far!” the man promised, leading the way. I asked his name. “Darius,” he said, “like the great Persian king.” He smiled, showing off his remaining teeth.

We passed through a shabby little square where merchants offered cheap trinkets—miniature aurochs and lions and dragons—to the tourists, of whom there were a great many, for we were not the only travelers who had come to Babylon that day in search of the fabled Wonders. Beyond a maze of dusty, winding alleys—surely this was not the grid city laid out by Nebuchadnezzar—we at last came to the foot of a great pile of ruins. Arguably, this structure reached to the sky, or once had done so, before time or man demolished it, so in a way it resembled a mountain, if only a small one.

Darius urged us to dismount and follow him. Before we could go farther, another fellow insisted that we each pay for the privilege; this fellow also promised to look after our asses. Antipater handed the gatekeeper the requested coinage, and Darius led us to a stairway with rubble on either side that ascended to a series of small landings. Along the way, someone had placed numerous potted plants, and on some of the landings spindly trees and thirsty-looking shrubs were actually growing from the debris. The dilapidated effect was more sad than spectacular. At last we came to an open area near the summit, where broken columns and ruptured paving bricks gave evidence of what once had been a magnificent terrace, now shaded by date palms and scented by small lemon and orange trees. The leaves of a knotty-limbed olive tree shimmered silver and green in the breeze.

“Hardly the mountain forest that Nebuchadnezzar built,” muttered Antipater, catching his breath after the ascent. After the steady climb, I felt a bit light-headed myself.

“How do they water all these plants?” I said.

“Ah, you are wise, my young friend!” declared our guide. “You perceive the secret of the Hanging Gardens. Come, see!”

Darius led us to a brick-framed doorway nearby, which opened onto a shaft that ran downward at a sloping angle. Coming up the dimly lit passage toward us was a man with a yoke across his shoulders, with a bucket of water connected to each end. Huffing and puffing and covered with sweat, the water-bearer nonetheless flashed a weary grin as he emerged into the light and shambled past us.

“A good thing we’re near the river, if men have to carry water up this shaft all day,” I said.

Antipater raised his eyebrows. “Ah, but once upon a time, Gordianus, this shaft must have contained the mechanism that delivered a continuous flow of water for the gardens.” He pointed to various mysterious bits of metal affixed to the surface of the shaft. “Onesicritus, who saw these gardens in the days of Alexander, speaks of a device like a gigantic screw that lifted great volumes of water as it turned. It seems that nothing of that remarkable mechanism remains, but the shaft is still here, leading down, we may presume, to a cistern fed by the river. Without the irrigation screw, the industrious citizens of Babylon have resorted to the labor of their own bodies to keep some semblance of the garden alive, from civic pride perhaps, and for the benefit of paying visitors like ourselves.”

I nodded dubiously. The Hanging Gardens might once have been magnificent, but the decrepit remains could hardly compare to the other World Wonders we had seen on our journey.

Then I walked a few steps beyond the opening of the shaft, to a spot that afforded an unobstructed view of the ziggurat.

The walls of Babylon had been pulled down. The Hanging Gardens were in ruins. But the great ziggurat remained, rising mountainlike from the midst of the dun-colored city. Each of the seven stepped-back tiers had once been a different color. Almost all of the decorative work had been stripped away (by Xerxes when he sacked the city, and by subsequent looters), and the brick walls had begun to crumble, but enough of the original facade remained to indicate how the ziggurat must once have appeared. The first and largest tier was brick red, but the next had been dazzling white (faced with imported limestone and bitumen, I later learned), the next decorated with iridescent blue tiles, the next a riot of patterns in yellow and green, and so on. In the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the effect must have been unearthly. Amid the ziggurat’s marred perfection I noticed tiny specks here and there on its surface. It was only when I saw that these specks moved—that they were, in fact, men—that I realized the true scale of the ziggurat. The thing was even larger than I had realized.

The sun was at last beginning to sink, casting its lowering rays across the dusty city and bathing the ziggurat in orange light. Etemenanki the Babylonians called it, the Foundation of Heaven and Earth. Truly, it seemed to me that so huge and strange a thing could scarcely have been created by human hands.

Antipater had similar thoughts. Standing next to me, he broke into verse:

What monstrous Cyclops built this vast mound for Assyrian Semiramis?

Or what giants, sons of Gaia, raised it in seven tiers

To scrape against the seven Pleiades?

Immovable, unshakable, a mass eternal,

Like lofty Mount Athos it weighs upon the earth.

Travel-weary and light-headed though I was, I caught Antipater’s mistake. “You said Nebuchadnezzar built the ziggurat, not Semiramis,” I said.

He gave me that look again, as if I were a child. “Poetic license, Gordianus! Semiramis scans better, and the name is far more euphonious. Who could compose a poem around a name as cumbersome as ‘Nebuchadnezzar’?”

AS DARKNESS FELL, DARIUS HELPED US FIND LODGINGS FOR THE NIGHT. THE little inn to which he guided us was near the river, he assured us, and though we could smell the river while we ate a frugal meal of flatbread and dates in the common room, our room upstairs had no view of it. Indeed, when I tried to open the shutters, they banged against an unsightly section of the city wall that stretched along the waterfront.

“Tomorrow you see Etemenanki,” insisted Darius, who had shared our meal and followed us to the room. “What time do I meet you?”

“Tomorrow, we rest,” said Antipater, collapsing on the narrow bed. “You don’t mind sleeping on that mat on the floor, do you, Gordianus?”

“Actually, I was thinking of taking a walk,” I said.

Antipater made no reply; he was already snoring. But Darius vigorously shook his head. “Not safe after dark,” he said. “You stay inside.”

I frowned. “You assured Antipater this was a good neighborhood, with no thieves or pickpockets.”

“I tell the truth—no worry about robbers.”

“What’s the danger, then?”

Darius’s expression was grave. “After dark, she comes out.”

“She? Who are you talking about? Speak clearly!”

“I say too much already. But don’t go out until daylight. I meet you then!” Without another word, he disappeared.

I dropped to the floor and reclined on the mat, thinking I would never get to sleep with Antipater snoring so loudly. The next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming in the open window.

BY THE TIME WE WENT DOWN TO EAT BREAKFAST, THE SUN WAS ALREADY high. There was only one other guest in the common room. His costume was so outlandish, I almost laughed when I saw him. The only astrologers I had ever seen were on the stage, in comedies, and this man might have been one of them. He wore a high yellow hat that rose in tiers, not unlike those of the ziggurat, and a dark blue robe decorated with images of stars and constellations sewn in yellow. His shoes, encrusted with semiprecious stones, ended in spiral loops at the toes. His long black beard had been crimped and plaited and sprinkled with yellow powder so that it radiated from his jaw like solar rays.

Antipater invited the stranger to join us. He introduced himself as Mushezib, an astrologer visiting Babylon from his native city of Ecbatana. He had traveled widely and his Greek was excellent, probably better than mine.

“You’ve come to see the ziggurat,” speculated Antipater.

“Or what remains of it,” said Mushezib. “There’s also a very fine school for astrologers here, where I hope to find a position as a teacher. And you?”

“We’re simply here to see the city,” said Antipater. “But not today. I’m too tired and my whole body aches from riding yesterday.”

“But we can’t just stay in all day,” I said. “Perhaps there’s something of interest close by.”

“I’m told there’s a small temple of Ishtar just up the street,” said Mushezib. “It’s mostly hidden from sight behind a high wall, and apparently it’s in ruins; it was desecrated long ago by Xerxes and never reconsecrated or rebuilt. I don’t suppose there’s much to see—”

“But you can’t go there,” said the innkeeper, overhearing and joining the conversation. He, too, looked like a type who might have stepped out of a stage comedy. He was a big fellow with a round face and a ready smile. With his massive shoulders and burly arms, he looked quite capable of breaking up a fight and throwing the offenders onto the street, should such a disturbance ever occur in his sleepy tavern.

“Who forbids it?” said the astrologer.

The innkeeper shrugged. “No one forbids it. A deserted temple belongs to no one and everyone—common property, they say. But nobody goes there—because of her.”

My ears pricked up. “Who are you talking about?”

Finding his Greek inadequate, the innkeeper addressed the astrologer in Parthian.

Mushezib’s face grew long. “Our host says the temple is . . . haunted.”

“Haunted?” I said.

“I forget the Greek word, but I think the Latin is lemur, yes?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “A manifestation of the dead that lingers on earth. A thing that was mortal once, but no longer lives or breathes.” Unready or unable to cross the river Styx to the realm of the dead, lemures stalked the earth, usually but not always appearing at night.

“The innkeeper says there is a lemur at this nearby temple,” said Mushezib. “A woman dressed in moldering rags, with a hideous face. People fear to go there.”

“Is she dangerous?” I said.

Mushezib conversed with the innkeeper. “Not just dangerous, but deadly. Only a few mornings ago, a man who had gone missing the night before was found dead on the temple steps, his neck broken. Now they lock the gate, which before was never locked.”

So this was the nocturnal menace Darius had warned me about, fearing even to name the thing aloud.

“But surely in broad daylight—” began Antipater.

“No, no!” protested the innkeeper’s wife, who suddenly joined us. She was almost as big as her husband, but had a scowling demeanor—another type suitable for the stage, I thought, the irascible innkeeper’s wife. She spoke better Greek than her husband, and her thick Egyptian accent explained the Alexandrian delicacies among the Babylonian breakfast fare.

“Stay away from the old temple!” she cried. “Don’t go there! You die if you go there!”

Her husband appeared to find this outburst unseemly. He laughed nervously and shrugged with his palms up, then took her aside, shaking his head and whispering to her. If he was trying to calm her, he failed. After a brief squabble, she threw up her hands and stalked off.

“It must be rather distressing, having a lemur so nearby,” muttered Antipater. “Bad for business, I should imagine. Do you think that’s why there are so few people here at the inn? I’m surprised our host would even bring up the subject. Well, I’m done with my breakfast, so if you’ll excuse me, I intend to return to our room and spend the whole day in bed. Oh, don’t look so crestfallen, Gordianus! Go out and explore the city without me.”

I felt some trepidation about venturing out in such an exotic city by myself, but I needn’t have worried. The moment I stepped into the street I was accosted by our guide from the previous day.

“Where is your grandfather?” said Darius.

I laughed. “He’s not my grandfather, just my traveling companion. He’s too tired to go out.”

“Ah, then I show you the city, eh? Just the two of us.”

I frowned. “I’m afraid I haven’t much money on me, Darius.”

He shrugged. “What is money? It comes, it goes. But if I show you the ziggurat, you remember all your life.”

“Actually, I’m rather curious about that temple of Ishtar just up the street.”

He went pale. “No, no, no! We don’t go there.”

“We can at least walk by, can’t we? Is it this way?” I said.

Next to the inn was a derelict structure that must once have been a competing tavern, but was now shuttered and boarded up; it looked rather haunted itself. Just beyond this abandoned property was a brick wall with a small wooden gate. The wall was not much higher than my head; beyond it, I could see what remained of the roof of the temple, which appeared to have collapsed. I pushed on the gate and found that it was locked. I ran my fingers over the wall, where much of the mortar between the bricks had worn away. The fissures would serve as excellent footholds. I stepped back, studying the wall to find the easiest place to scale it.

Darius read my thoughts. He gripped my arm. “No, no, no, young Roman! Are you mad?”

“Come now, Darius. The sun is shining. No lemur would dare to show its face on such a beautiful day. It will take me only a moment to climb over the wall and have a look. You can stay here and wait for me.”

But Darius protested so vociferously, gesticulating and yammering in his native tongue, that I gave up my plan to see the temple and agreed to move on.

Darius showed me what he called the Royal District, where Semiramis and Nebuchadnezzar had built their palaces. As far as I could tell, nothing at all remained of the grandeur that had so impressed Alexander when he sojourned in Babylon. The once-resplendent complex, now stripped of every ornament, appeared to have been subdivided into private dwellings and crowded apartment buildings. The terraces were strewn with rubbish. The whole district smelled of stewing fish, soiled diapers, and cloying spices.

“They say that’s the room where Alexander died.” Darius pointed to an open window from which I could hear a couple arguing and a baby crying. The balcony was festooned with laundry hung out to dry.

If there had ever been an open square around the great ziggurat, it had long ago been filled in with ramshackle dwellings of brick and mud, so that we came upon the towering structure all at once as we rounded a corner. The ziggurat had seemed more mysterious when I had seen it the previous night, from a distance and by the beguiling light of sunset. Seen close up and in broad daylight, it looked to be in hardly better shape than the mound of rubble that had once been the Hanging Gardens. The surfaces of each tier were quite uneven, causing many of the swarming visitors to trip and stumble. Whole sections of the ramparts leaned outward at odd angles, looking as if they might tumble down at any moment.

Darius insisted we walk all the way to the top. To do so, we had to circle each tier, take a broad flight of steps up to the next tier, circle around, and do the same thing again. I noticed Darius pausing every so often to run his fingers over the walls. At first I thought he was simply admiring the scant remnants of decorative stonework or glazed brick, but then I realized he was tugging at various bits and pieces, seeing if anything would come loose. When he saw the expression on my face, he laughed.

“I look for mementos, young Roman,” he explained. “Everyone does it. Anything of value that could be removed easily and without damage is already removed, long ago. But, every so often, you find a piece ready to come loose. So you take it. Everyone does it. Why do you frown at me like that?”

I was imagining the great temples of Rome being subjected to such impious treatment. Antipater claimed that the ancient gods of this land were essentially the same as those of the Greeks and Romans, just with different names and aspects; Marduk was Jupiter, Ishtar was Venus, and so on. To filch bits and pieces from a sacred structure that had been built to the glory of Jupiter was surely wrong, even if the structure was in disrepair. But I was a visitor, and I said nothing.

The way became more and more crowded as we ascended, for each tier was smaller than the last. All around us were travelers in many different types of costumes, chattering in many different languages. From their garb, I took one group to be from India, and judging by their saffron complexions and almond-shaped eyes, another group had come all the way from Serica, the land of silk. There were also a great many astrologers, some of them dressed as I had seen Mushezib that morning, and others in outfits even more outlandish, as if they were trying to outdo one another with absurdly tall hats, elaborately decorated robes, and bizarrely shaped beards.

On the sixth and next-to-last tier, I heard a voice speak my name, and turned to see Mushezib.

The astrologer acknowledged me with a nod. “We meet again.”

“It would seem that every visitor in Babylon is here today,” I said, jostled by a passing group of men in Egyptian headdresses. “Is that a queue?”

It appeared that one had to stand in line to ascend the final flight of steps to the uppermost tier; only when a certain number of visitors left were more allowed to go up. The queue stretched out of sight around the corner.

Mushezib smiled. “Shall we go up?” he said.

“I’m not sure I care to stand in that line for the next hour. And I’m not sure I have enough money,” I added, for I saw that the line-keepers were charging admission.

“No need for that.” With a dismissive wave to Darius, Mushezib took my arm and escorted me to the front of the line. The line-keepers deferred to him at once, bowing their heads and stepping back to let us pass.

“How do you merit such a privilege?” I asked.

“My costume,” he explained. “Astrologers do not stand in line with tourists to ascend to the summit of Etemenanki.”

A warm, dry wind blew constantly across the uppermost tier. The sun shone down without shadow. The view in every direction was limitless; below me I could see the whole city of Babylon, and to the north and south stretched the sinuous course of the Euphrates. Far to the east I could see the Tigris river, with sparkling cities along its bank, and in the uttermost distance loomed a range of snow-capped mountains.

Mushezib gazed at the horizon and spoke in a dreamlike voice. “Legend says that Alexander, when he entered Babylon and found Etemenanki in lamentable condition, gave gold to the astrologers and charged them with restoring the ziggurat to its former glory. ‘The work must be done by the time I return from conquering India,’ he said, and off he went. When he came back some years later, he saw that nothing had been done, and called the astrologers before him. ‘Why is Etemenanki still in disrepair?’ he asked. And the astrologers replied: ‘Why have you not yet conquered India?’ Alexander was furious. He ordered the whole structure to be demolished and the ground leveled, so that he could build a new ziggurat from scratch. But before that could happen, Alexander took ill and died, and Etemenanki remained as it was, like a mountain slowly crumbling to dust.”

He gestured to the center of the tier. “This space is vacant now, but in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, upon this summit stood a small temple. Within the temple there was no statue or any other ornament, only a giant couch made of gold with pillows and coverlets of silk—a couch fit for the King of Gods to lie upon. Each night, a young virgin from a good family was selected by the priests to ascend alone to the top of Etemenanki, enter the temple, and climb upon the couch. There the virgin waited for Marduk to come down from the heavens and spend the night with her. When she descended the ziggurat the next day, the priests examined her. If her maidenhead was seen to be broken, then it was known that Marduk had found her worthy.”

“And if she was still a virgin?” I asked.

“Then it was seen that Marduk had rejected her, to the eternal shame of the girl and her family.” Mushezib smiled. “I see you raise an eyebrow, Gordianus. But is it not the same with your great god Jupiter? Does he not enjoy taking pleasure with mortals?”

“Yes, but in all the stories I’ve heard, Jupiter picks his own partners, and woos them a bit before the consummation. They’re not lined up and delivered to him by priests to be deflowered, one after another. Jupiter’s temples are for worship, not sexual assignations.”

Mushezib shook his head. “You people of the West have always had different ideas about these things. Alas, for better or worse, Greek ways have triumphed here in Babylon, thanks to the influence of Alexander and his successors. The old customs are no longer practiced as they once were. Virgins no longer ascend the ziggurat to lie with Marduk, and women no longer go to the temples of Ishtar to give themselves to the first man who pays.” He saw my reaction and laughed out loud. “You really must learn to exercise more control over your expressions, young man. How easily shocked you Romans are, even more so than Greeks.”

“But what is this custom you speak of?”

“In the days of Nebuchadnezzar, it was mandatory that every woman, at least once in her life, should dress in special robes and place a special wreath upon her head, and then go to one of the temples of Ishtar at night and sit in a special chair in the holy enclosure. There she had to remain, until a stranger came and tossed a silver coin in her lap. With that man she was obliged to enter the temple, lie upon a couch, and make love. No man who was able to pay could be turned away. All women did this, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, for the glory of Ishtar.”

“And for the enjoyment of any man with a coin,” I muttered. “I should imagine that the young, beautiful women were selected right away. But what if the woman was so ugly that no man would choose her?”

Mushezib nodded. “This was known to happen. There are stories of women who had to stay a very long time in the holy precinct—months, or even years. Of course, such an embarrassment brought shame upon her family. In such a case, sooner or later, by exchange of favors or outright bribery, some fellow was induced to go and offer the woman a coin and lie with her. Or, in the last resort, one of her male relatives was selected to do what had to be done. And at last the woman’s duty to Ishtar was discharged.”

I shook my head. “You’re right, Mushezib—we Romans have a very different way of thinking about such things.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge the customs of others, my young friend. The so-called wanton nature of the Babylonian people was their salvation when Alexander entered the city. He might have destroyed this place, as he had so many other cities, but when the wives and daughters of Babylon gave themselves freely to Alexander and his men, the conquerors were not merely placated; they decided that Babylon was the finest city on earth.”

I sighed. Truly, of all the places I had traveled with Antipater, this land and its people and their ways were the most foreign to me. Standing atop the so-called Foundation of Heaven and Earth, I felt how small I was, and how vast was the world around me.

Mushezib recognized some fellow astrologers nearby and excused himself, leaving me on my own. I lingered for a while atop the ziggurat, then descended the stairway to the lower tier, where Darius awaited me.

As we made our way down, level by level, I repeated to Darius my conversation with Mushezib, and asked him what he knew of the old custom of women offering themselves at the temples of Ishtar.

“Astrologer he may be, but Mushezib does not know everything,” said Darius.

“What do you mean?”

“He tells you that sooner or later every woman satisfied a man at the temple and was released from her duty. Not true.”

“Surely no woman was kept waiting at the temple forever.”

“Some women had no family to rescue them. There they sat, day after day, year after year, until they became toothless old hags, with no chance that any man would ever pay to lie with them.”

“What became of such women?”

“What do you think? Finally they died, never leaving the temple grounds, cursed by Ishtar for failing her.”

“What a terrible story!” Suddenly, all that I had seen and heard that day connected in my thoughts, and I felt a quiver of apprehension. “The ruined temple of Ishtar near the inn, and the lemur who supposedly haunts it—do you think . . . ?”

Darius nodded gravely. “Now you understand! Imagine how bitter she must be, still to be trapped in the place of her shame and suffering. Is it any wonder that she killed a man who dared to enter the grounds a few nights ago?”

“Let me make sure I understand—”

“No, speak no more of it! To do so can only bring bad fortune. We talk of something else. And when we go back to the inn, we do not walk by the temple again!”

My curiosity about the ruined temple and its supernatural resident was more piqued than ever. Darius read my face.

“Do not go back there, young Roman!” he said, almost shouting. “What do you think would happen, if the old hag sees a virile young fellow like you, barely old enough to grow a beard? The sight of such as you would surely drive her to madness—to murder!”

Darius had become so agitated that I quickly changed the subject.

We spent the rest of the day walking all over Babylon, and I found myself growing more and more dispirited. All the proud structures that had once made the city great were in shambles, or else had vanished altogether. Many of the citizens were in a ruined state as well—I had never seen so many people crippled by lameness or deformity. Apparently these unfortunates flocked to Babylon to take advantage of the charitable institutions maintained by the astrologers and sages, whose academies were the main industry of the city, along with the thriving trade in tourism.

At last, as twilight fell, we wended our way back to the inn, with Darius leading the way. I noticed that our route was slightly different from the one we had taken heading out that morning; Darius deliberately avoided walking by the ruined temple of Ishtar. To reward him for serving as my guide all day, I could do no less than offer him dinner, but to my surprise Darius declined and hurried off, saying he would return the next morning, when Antipater would surely be rested and ready for his own tour of the city. Could it be that Darius feared to be even this close to the old temple after dark?

As soon as he was out of sight, I turned aside from the entrance to the inn and walked up the street, past the derelict building next door, to the low wall that surrounded the old temple. It was the dim, colorless hour when shadows grow long and merge together, swallowing the last faint light of dusk.

It was not as easy to study the wall as it had been earlier in the day, and the first place I chose to make my climb proved to be unscalable. But on my second attempt, I found a series of toeholds that allowed me to reach the top.

My feet secure in their niches, I rested my elbows on the top of the wall and peered over. The temple was indeed in ruins, with not much left of the roof and gaping holes in the walls. Any decorative tiles or statues appeared to have been removed. The wall of the derelict building next door and the city wall along the river enclosed the courtyard next to the temple, which was all in shadow; all I could see were some withered trees and fragments of building blocks and paving tiles. But amid this jumble, as my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw a row of waist-high objects that looked like the circular drums of a column. It occurred to me that these might be low-backed chairs carved from solid blocks of stone—too heavy for looters to carry off, I thought, or perhaps the ceremonial chairs had been left there because . . .

Seated on one of the chairs, almost lost in shadow, I saw an uncertain silhouette. It was impossible to tell whether the figure was facing me or had its back to me—until the figure rose from the chair and began walking very slowly toward me.

My heart sped up. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my head. The uncanny silence of the approaching figure unnerved me.

I opened my mouth. For a long moment, nothing came out, and then, my voice cracking and ascending an octave, I heard myself say: “Speakee Greekee?”

The figure at last made a sound—a hideous laugh more horrible than the crunching of broken bones. My blood turned cold. The figure reached up with clawlike hands and pushed pack the moldering wreath that obscured its face.

Had the thing once been a woman? It was revolting to look at, with hair like worms and eyes that glinted like bits of obsidian. Its pale, rotting flesh was covered with warts. Broken teeth protruded from the black hole of its gaping mouth. The thing drew closer to me, filling my nostrils with the stench of putrefaction. Its low cackle rose to a sudden shriek.

I scrambled back from the wall, desperate to get away. One of my feet slipped from its toehold and I tumbled backward.

THE NEXT THING I KNEW, I WAS COMING TO MY SENSES, PROPPED UP IN A chair in the common room of the inn.

“Gordianus, are you all right?” said Antipater, hovering over me. “What happened to you? Were you set upon by robbers?”

“No, I fell . . .”

“In the middle of the street? That’s where Mushezib says he found you. It’s a good thing he happened by, or you’d still be lying out there, at the mercy of any cutthroat who happened by.”

Through bleary eyes, I saw that the astrologer stood nearby. Farther back, a few other guests were gathered around. The innkeeper was in their midst, standing a head taller than anyone else. He frowned and shook his head. Talk of robbers was bad for business.

“No one attacked me, Antipater. I simply . . . fell.” I was too chagrined to confess that I had attempted to scale the temple wall.

“The lad must have the falling sickness. Common among Romans,” said one of the guests, turning up his nose. This seemed to satisfy the others, who drew back and dispersed.

Antipater wrinkled his brow. “What really happened, Gordianus?”

Mushezib also remained. I saw no reason not to tell them both the truth. “I was curious. I wanted to have a look at the old temple of Ishtar, so I climbed to the top of the wall—”

“I knew it!” said Antipater. He scowled, then raised an eyebrow. “And? What did you see?”

“Ruins—there are only ruins left. And . . .”

“Go on,” said Antipater. He and Mushezib both leaned closer.

“I saw the lemur,” I whispered. “In the courtyard of the temple. She walked toward me—”

Mushezib made a scoffing sound. “Gordianus, you did not see a lemur.”

“How do you know what I saw?”

“A young man with a powerful imagination, alone in the dark in a strange city, looking at a ruined courtyard, which he has been told is haunted by a lemur—it’s not hard to understand how you came to think you saw such a thing.”

“I trust the evidence of my own eyes,” I said irritably. My head had begun to pound. “Don’t you believe that lemures exist?”

“I do not,” declared the astrologer. “The mechanisms of the stars, which rule all human action, do not allow the dead to remain among the living. It is scientifically impossible.”

“Ah, here we see where Chaldean stargazing comes into conflict with Greek religion, not to mention common sense,” said Antipater, ever ready to play the pedant, even with his young traveling companion still barely conscious after a dangerous fall. “As they rule supreme over the living, so the gods rule over the dead—”

“If one believes in these gods,” said Mushezib.

“You astrologers worship stars instead!” said Antipater, throwing up his hands.

“We do not worship the stars,” said Mushezib calmly. “We study them. Unlike your so-called gods, the vast interlocking mechanisms of the firmament do not care whether mortals make supplication to them or not. They do not watch over us or concern themselves with our behavior; their action is completely impersonal as they exert their rays of invisible force upon the earth. Just as the heavenly bodies control the tides and seasons, so they control the fates of mankind and of individual men. The gods, if they exist, may be more powerful than men, but they too are controlled by the sympathies and antipathies of the stars in conjunction—”

“What nonsense!” declared Antipater. “And you call this science?”

Mushezib drew a deep breath. “Let us not speak of matters about which our opinions are so divergent. Our concern now must be for your young friend. Are you feeling better, Gordianus?”

“I would be, if the two of you would stop squabbling.”

Mushezib smiled. “For your sake, Gordianus, we will change the subject.” He glanced at the innkeeper, who was serving some other guests, and lowered his voice. “Whatever you saw or did not see, it was good of you to calm the fears of the other guests—about the presence of robbers in the streets, I mean. Our poor host must hate all this talk of robbers, and of lemures, for that matter. He tells me he’s negotiating to buy the empty building next door. By this time next year, he hopes to expand his business to fill both buildings.”

Antipater surveyed the handful of guests in the room. “There hardly seems to be custom enough to fill this place, let alone an inn twice the size.”

“Our host is an optimist,” said Mushezib with a shrug. “One must be an optimist, I think, to live in Babylon.”

THAT NIGHT I SLEPT FITFULLY, DISTURBED BY TERRIBLE DREAMS. AT SOME point I woke up to find myself drenched with sweat. It seemed to me that I had heard a distant scream—not a shriek such as the lemur had made, but the sound of a man crying out. I decided the sound must have been part of my nightmare. I closed my eyes and slept soundly until the first glimmer of daylight from the window woke me.

When Antipater and I descended the stairs, we found the common room completely deserted, except for Darius, who was waiting for us to appear. He rushed up to us, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Come see, come see!” he said.

“What’s going on?” said Antipater.

“You must see for yourself. Something terrible—at the ruined temple of Ishtar!”

We followed him. A considerable crowd had gathered in the street. The gate in the wall stood wide open. People took turns peering inside, but no one dared to enter the courtyard.

“What on earth are they all looking at?” muttered Antipater. He pressed his way to the front of the crowd. I followed him, but Darius hung back.

“Oh dear!” whispered Antipater, peering through the gateway. He stepped aside so that I could have a better look.

The courtyard did not appear as frightening by morning light as it had the night before, but it was still a gloomy place, with weeds amid the broken paving blocks and the ugly reddish-brown wall looming behind it. I saw more clearly the stone chairs I had seen the night before—all empty now—and then I saw the body on the temple steps.

The man’s face was turned away, with his neck twisted at an odd angle, but he was dressed in a familiar blue robe embroidered with yellow stars, with spiral-toed shoes on his feet. His ziggurat-shaped hat had fallen from his head and lay near him on the top step.

“Is it Mushezib?” I whispered.

“Perhaps it’s another astrologer,” said Antipater. He turned to the crowd behind us. “Is Mushezib here? Has anyone seen Mushezib this morning?”

People shook their heads and murmured.

I had to know. I strode through the gateway and crossed the courtyard. Behind me I heard gasps and cries from the others, including Darius, who shouted, “No, no, no, young Roman! Come back!”

I ascended the steps. The body lay chest down, with the arms folded beneath it. I looked down and saw in profile the face of Mushezib. His eyes were wide open. His teeth were bared in a grimace. The way his neck was bent, there could be no doubt that it was broken. I knelt and waved my hand to scatter the flies that had gathered on his lips and eyelashes.

A glint of reflected sunlight caught my eye. It came from something inside his fallen hat, which lay nearby. I reached out and found, nestled inside, a piece of glazed tile no bigger than the palm of my hand. Bits of mortar clung to the edges, but otherwise it was in perfect condition; the glaze was a very dark blue, almost black. Mushezib must have taken it from the ziggurat the previous day, I thought, breaking it off one of the walls. What had Darius said? “Everyone does it”—including godless astrologers, apparently, though Mushezib had not been proud of taking the memento if he had seen fit to conceal it inside his hat.

Looking up, I saw an image of Ishtar looming above me. Etched in low relief on a large panel of baked clay built into the front wall of the temple, the image had not been visible to me the night before. Could this really be Venus, as seen through the eyes of the Babylonians? She was completely naked, with voluptuous hips and enormous breasts, but the goddess struck me as more frightening than alluring, with a strange conical cap on her head, huge wings folded behind her, and legs that ended in claws like those of a giant bird of prey. She stood upon two lions, grasping them with her talons, and was flanked by huge, staring owls.

I heard a voice behind me—a woman’s voice—issuing what had to be a command, though I could not understand the language. I turned to see that others had entered the courtyard—a group of priests, to judge by their pleated linen robes and exotic headdresses. Leading them was a woman past her first youth but still stunningly beautiful. It was she who spoke. At the sight of her my jaw dropped, for she was the very image of Ishtar, wearing the same conical cap, a golden cape fashioned to look like folded wings, and tall shoes that made her walk with an odd gait and mimicked the appearance of talons. At first, blinking in astonishment, I thought that she was as naked as the image of the goddess, but then a bit of sunlight shimmered across the gauzy, almost transparent gown that barely contained her breasts and ended at the top of her thighs. Her arms, crossed over her chest, did more to conceal her breasts than did the gown. In one hand she held a ceremonial ivory goad, and in the other a little whip.

Without pausing, the priestess strode forward. I stepped back to make way for her, concealing the small blue tile inside my tunic as I did so.

She gazed down at the body for a long moment, then briefly looked me up and down. “You are not Babylonian,” she said, in perfect Greek.

“I’m from Rome.”

She cocked her head. “That explains why you’re foolish enough to enter this courtyard, while those who know better stay back. Do you not realize that an uneasy spirit haunts this place?”

“Actually . . .” I hesitated. I was a stranger in Babylon, and it behooved a stranger to keep his mouth shut. Then I looked down at Mushezib. Flies had returned to gather on his face. They skittered over his lips and his open eyes, which seemed to stare up at me. “I saw the thing with my own eyes, last night.”

“You saw it?”

“The lemur—that’s what we call such a creature in Latin. I climbed to the top of that wall, and I saw the lemur here in the courtyard. She was hideous.”

The priestess gave me a reappraising glance. “Did you flee, young man?”

“Not exactly. I fell to the street and hit my head. That was the last I saw of her.”

“What do you know about this?” She gestured to the corpse.

“His name is Mushezib, from Ecbatana. He was a fellow guest at the inn up the street.”

“Why did he come here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it he who broke the lock we put on the gate?”

I shrugged and shook my head.

She turned and addressed the crowd that peered through the gateway. “This ruined temple is no longer sacred ground. Even so, the priesthood of Ishtar will take responsibility for this man’s body, until his relatives can be found.” She gestured to the priests. Looking nervous and reluctant, they stooped to lift the corpse and bear it away.

The priestess gave me a curious look. “All my life I’ve heard about the unquiet spirit that dwells here; the story must be centuries old. Some believe it, some do not. Never have I seen it with my own eyes. And never has violence been done here, until a man was killed a few days ago. That man died the same way, with his neck broken, and he was found on the same spot. Two deaths, in a matter of days! What could have stirred this lemur, as you call it, to commit murder? I must consult the goddess. Some way must be found to placate this restless spirit, before such a thing happens again.” She gazed up at the relief of Ishtar, her mirror image, and then back at me. “Let me give you some advice, young Roman. Enjoy your visit to Babylon—but do not return to this place again.”

She turned and followed the priests who were carrying away the body of Mushezib. I followed her, watching her wing-shaped cape shimmer in the morning sunlight. The cape was very sheer and supple, capturing the outline of her swaying buttocks. As soon as we were all in the street, the gate was pulled shut and men set to work repairing the broken lock. The priestess and her retinue departed. The murmuring crowd gradually dispersed.

ANTIPATER WANTED TO SEE THE ZIGGURAT. DARIUS, EAGER TO GET AWAY from the haunted temple, offered to show it to him, and I followed along. The visit took up much of the day. Antipater needed to rest before ascending to each successive tier, and without an astrologer to accompany us, we had to wait in line a long time to reach the uppermost platform.

From time to time, as we walked alongside the massive, crumbling walls, I surreptitiously pulled out the little tile I had taken from Mushezib’s hat. I was curious to see from what section of the ziggurat he had taken it. But though there were a number of places where bits of glazed tile remained, I could see no tiles that seemed to match exactly the deep, midnight-blue shade of the specimen I held in the palm of my hand.

An idea began to form in my mind, and other ideas began to revolve around it—rather as the stars revolve around the earth, I thought, and appropriately so, for at the center of these ideas was Mushezib the astrologer and his fate.

As we toured the city that day, I followed my companions in such a cloud that Antipater worried I was still dazed by the blow to my head. I told him not to worry, and explained that I was merely thinking.

“Daydreaming about that priestess of Ishtar, I’ll wager!” said Darius with a laugh.

“As a matter of a fact, I may need to see her again,” I said thoughtfully.

“Indeed!” Darius gave me a leer, then offered to show us the sacred precinct where the priestess resided. I took care to remember the location, so that I could find my way back.

We did not return to the inn until dusk. I wanted to have another look at the ruined temple, despite the priestess’s warning, but I feared to go there after nightfall. Besides, I doubted that I could find what I was looking for in darkness.

The next morning, I woke early. While Antipater still snored, I slipped into my clothes and crept quietly down the stairs. I passed the open door to the kitchen next to the common room and saw, with some relief, that the innkeeper and his wife were already at work preparing breakfast.

Without a sound, I left the inn and hurried up the street. The gate was again securely locked, but I found the place where I had scaled the wall before. I climbed to the top, hesitated for just a moment, then scrambled over and dropped to the courtyard.

The dim morning light cast long shadows. I felt a quiver of dread. Every now and then, amid the shadows, I imagined I saw a movement, and I gave a start. But I was determined to do what I had come to do. My heart pounding, I walked all over the courtyard, paying special attention to the wall of the vacant tavern and also to the ground along the river wall, looking for any place where the earth might have been disturbed recently. It was not long before I found such a spot.

I knelt amid the uprooted weeds and began to dig.

THE SUN HAD RISEN CONSIDERABLY BEFORE I RETURNED TO THE INN.

“Gordianus! Where in Hades have you been?” cried Antipater. The other guests had all gone out for the day. Only Antipater and Darius were in the common room. “I’ve been terribly worried about you—”

He fell silent when he saw the company of armed men who entered the inn behind me, followed by the priestess of Ishtar.

Alarmed by the rumble of stamping feet, the innkeeper rushed into the room. His face turned pale. “What’s this?” he cried.

Moving quickly, some of the men surrounded the innkeeper and seized his brawny arms. Others stormed the kitchen. A moment later they dragged the innkeeper’s wife into the room, shrieking and cursing in Egyptian.

I sighed with relief. Until that moment, I had not been entirely certain of the accusation I had made against the innkeeper and his wife, but the looks on their faces assured me of their guilt.

The rest of the armed company dispersed to search the premises, beginning with the innkeeper’s private quarters. Within moments, one of the men returned with a small but ornately decorated wooden box, which he opened for the inspection of the priestess. I peered over the man’s shoulder. The box was filled with cosmetics and compounds and unguents, but the colors and textures were not of any common sort; this was the kit of someone who practiced disguise as a profession—an actor or street mime.

The most famous mime troupes, as even a Roman knew, came from Alexandria—as did the innkeeper’s wife.

“Take your hands off that, you swine!” she cried, breaking free of the guard who held her and rushing at the man who held the box. He blanched at the sight of her and started back. So did I, for even without the horrifying makeup, the face of the hideous lemur I had seen in the courtyard of the temple was suddenly before me, and I heard again the shriek that had made my blood run cold.

Like a charging rhinoceros, she rushed headlong at the priestess, who stood her ground. I braced myself for the spectacle of the impact—then watched as the priestess raised her ceremonial goad and swung it, backhanded, with all her might, striking the innkeeper’s wife squarely across the face. With a squeal that stabbed at my eardrums, the innkeeper’s wife flailed and tumbled to one side, upsetting a great many small tables and chairs.

The guards swarmed over her and, after a considerable struggle, restrained her.

One of the men who had been searching the premises entered the room, stepping past the commotion to show something to the priestess. In his hand he held a lovely specimen of a glazed tile. Its color was midnight blue.

Gazing at the shambles of the common room, Antipater turned to me and blinked. “Gordianus—please explain!”

MUCH LATER THAT DAY, IN THE TAVERN OF ANOTHER ESTABLISHMENT—FOR the inn where we had been staying was no longer open for business—Antipater, Darius, and I raised three cups brimming with Babylonian beer and drank a toast to the departed Mushezib.

“Explain it all to me again,” said Darius. He seemed unable to grasp that the lemur that had haunted the old temple had never been a lemur at all, so strong was his superstitious dread of the place.

I lubricated my throat with another swallow of beer, then proceeded. “At some point—we don’t know exactly how or when, but not too long ago—the innkeeper or his wife went digging around the ruined temple grounds. Literally digging, I mean. And what should they discover, but a previously unknown cache of ancient glazed bricks, undoubtedly from the longdemolished wall of Nebuchadnezzar that used to run along the riverfront, where a newer, plainer wall now stands. They knew at once that those bricks must be worth a fortune. But their discovery was located in an old temple precinct; the land itself is common property and not for sale, and any artifacts or treasure found there would almost certainly belong to the priesthood of Ishtar. The innkeeper clearly had no right to the bricks, but he intended to get his hands on them nonetheless. The best way to do that, he decided, was to purchase the derelict property adjacent to the temple, from which he and his wife could gain access to the courtyard and the buried bricks without being observed. But negotiating to buy that property was taking time, and the innkeeper was fearful that someone else might go nosing about and find those buried bricks. The old tales about the place being haunted gave him a perfect way to frighten others away. The innkeeper’s wife took on the task of playing the lemur. As we now know, in her younger days, she was part of an Egyptian mime troupe. She’s an intimidating woman to start with; with the right makeup, and calling on her skills as an actress, she could be truly terrifying, as I experienced for myself. But the lemur didn’t frighten everyone away; at least one man must have dared to enter the courtyard a few nights ago, perhaps out of simple curiosity, and he was the first to die.”

“Was it the innkeeper’s wife who broke the first victim’s neck?” asked Antipater.

“She’s probably strong enough, and we’ve seen what she’s capable of doing when roused, but her husband confessed to the killing. Those brawny arms of his are quite capable of breaking any man’s neck.”

“And Mushezib? What was the astrologer doing in the courtyard in the middle of the night?” said Darius.

“I think it wasn’t until after we all went to bed that night that Mushezib’s thoughts led him to the same conclusion I reached, a day later. He had no belief in a lemur; what, then, had I actually seen? Perhaps someone pretending to be a lemur—but why? In the middle of the night, Mushezib broke the lock on the gate, slipped inside, and started snooping around. He even did a bit of digging, and found this, which he slipped under his hat.” I held up the little tile. “If I’d seen his hands, and the dirt that must have been on his fingers, I might have realized the truth sooner, but his arms were folded beneath him, and the body was carried off by the priests before I could take a closer look.”

“You were looking mostly at the priestess of Ishtar, I think,” said Darius.

I cleared my throat. “Anyway, the innkeeper must have come upon Mushezib, there in the courtyard. There was a struggle—I heard Mushezib scream, but I thought I was dreaming—and the innkeeper broke his neck. As he had done with his previous victim, he left the body on the temple steps as a warning, and there we found poor Mushezib the next day.

“It wasn’t until we went to the ziggurat, and I was unable to find any tiles that matched the one in Mushezib’s hat, that I began to think he must have found that tile elsewhere. It occurred to me that he might have found it on the old temple grounds—and the rest of the tale unfolded in my mind. Early this morning I stole into the courtyard and found the spot where the bricks are buried. I also discovered a concealed and crudely made opening in the wall of the vacant building next to the temple. I went at once to the priestess of Ishtar to tell her of my suspicions. She gathered some armed men and followed me back to the inn. Along with the tiles the innkeeper had already dug up, the priestess’s men also found a secret passage the innkeeper had made between his private quarters and the vacant building next door, which, as I had discovered, had its own concealed access to the temple courtyard, also made by the innkeeper. That was how he and his wife managed to enter the courtyard even when the gate was locked. By passing through the vacant building, the so-called lemur could appear and disappear—and the killer was able to surprise his victims and then vanish, never stepping into the street.”

“What will become of that murderous innkeeper and his monster of a wife?” asked Antipater.

“The priestess says they must pay for their crimes with their lives.”

“And what will become of all those lovely bricks?” asked Darius, his eyes twinkling at the thought of so much loot.

“The priesthood of Ishtar has claimed them. I imagine they’re digging them up even now,” I said.

“Too bad you didn’t get to claim those bricks.” Darius sighed. “You know, I hate to speak of such a thing, but not since the first day have I been given a single coin for the many excellent favors I have rendered to my new friends.”

I laughed. “Never fear, Darius, you will be paid for your services!” I patted the heavy coin purse at my waist. That afternoon, after the arrest of the innkeeper and his wife, I had been called back to the sacred precinct of Ishtar for a private interview with the priestess. She warmly praised my perspicacity, and insisted that I accept a very generous reward.

Darius looked at the money bag, then raised an eyebrow. “Was that the only reward she gave you, young Roman?”

Antipater also looked at me intently.

My face turned hot. Was I blushing? “As a matter of fact, it was not,” I said, but of whatever else took place between the priestess and me that afternoon, I chose to say no more.